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[Roleplaying Games] I Feel a Tingle in my Verse

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So I’m making an anime harem situation for my players in Dark Heresy. By that I mean I already had NPCs planned to be regular folks they’d see but since my friend as a GM allowed me to indulge in romance stuff for DnD and Dark Heresy (Sir Lansrick love him wife), I offered if he would like his female PC to be able to start a romance with at least three different NPCs at the start with more folks being made not to this purpose but just as a natural consequence of their next campaign being planned and them being around. Right now there’s the sensitive poetic veteran, the clumsy naive but romantic nerd scribe, and the abrasive high-born jackass with a softer side. Also ratboy but she is not allowed to romance ratboy.

Like I said, those characters already had purposes and stories beforehand, but since the player seems to have a hard time of interacting with the world outside of the current mission (but is very comfortable with this sort of thing) I thought it would be a neat way of spicing up interactions for the final campaign of three.

So my push to get more people to play diverse RPGs, which means anything other than DnD seems to be progressing well.

Currently I have games of Tales from the Loop, Call of Cthulhu, Legend of the Five Rings and Vampire games going by customers either in store or outside it. I'm personally running Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Call of Cthulhu and Vampire currently. Though I am aiming to reduce some Warhammer to play something else spicier, like possibly L5R or maybe some Tales from the Loop as well. I've also got a young man to try and run the Star Wars FFG roleplaying game as well (Force and Destiny).

My plan is to do an open RPG weekend, where I give people the opportunity to try a wide array of systems. I'm still going to run Dungeons and Dragons plus a Pathfinder game or two for people, but things that aren't DnD are a huge priority to show that roleplaying is a really diverse (and healthy) space for gaming right now.

Also, I got a bitchin' witch-mark in the form of the claw marks of a bird of prey for failing my malignancy test from corruption so hey conversation starter with the ladies.

edit: Actually no it wasn't. Turns out we were just kind of looking slack-jawed on the shuttle every time we "looped" and "died". Turns out the tyrant star, a malevolent star that was fucking with us, wanted us to call an exterminatus on the world which I realized at the right time when it disappeared after my character personally asked the captain to ask the astropath to ask the inquisitor for clearance to exterminatus. I sprinted back to the bridge right on time and told him to not.

So my push to get more people to play diverse RPGs, which means anything other than DnD seems to be progressing well.

Currently I have games of Tales from the Loop, Call of Cthulhu, Legend of the Five Rings and Vampire games going by customers either in store or outside it. I'm personally running Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Call of Cthulhu and Vampire currently. Though I am aiming to reduce some Warhammer to play something else spicier, like possibly L5R or maybe some Tales from the Loop as well. I've also got a young man to try and run the Star Wars FFG roleplaying game as well (Force and Destiny).

My plan is to do an open RPG weekend, where I give people the opportunity to try a wide array of systems. I'm still going to run Dungeons and Dragons plus a Pathfinder game or two for people, but things that aren't DnD are a huge priority to show that roleplaying is a really diverse (and healthy) space for gaming right now.

I want to go to there. Because my group acts like non-D&D games are plague rats stuffed inside larger plague rats.

Same player in DH is making us delay for two weeks after having plenty of time and warning to clear his schedule. I am so disappointed. This guy is the reason we can’t play outside of summer and winter, why I requested my friend GM a DH game without inviting him so I could actually play, and commonly gives no explanation to why he won’t be available. I’d be leaning to kick him if he wasn’t there since the beginning like four years ago, this is our biggest social contact point besides graduate school because he’s always busy and never has time to hang out, and it would drop us down to only two consistent players to GM for which even if it’s entirely possible to do in DH I don’t want to have them have npcs they or I don’t want to order around to pick up numbers.

I’m just frustrated and disappointed because we are seriously two sessions away from completing an entire campaign. This thing has been in the running for two years and we’re running out of time before grad school starts again and he’ll be the guy that’s always busy again. We have one more sure shot next Sunday but even that possibly comes with complications because we both have to attend a week-long thing for school and I have to move in my bed to my new apartment.

I wasn't sure if this belonged more in the Lego thread or the RPG one. Here is the party for the Star Wars RPG I'm playing in. Since it is still early in the game, I built figures for the desired versions. The mando figure has his full set of armor, the Jedi has his lightsaber, etc...

The group consists of a Falleen Gunslinger, Corellian Infiltrator, Mandalorian Heavy, Pantoran Soresu Defender, and the Pantoran Diplomat NPC.

Edit: That player made time and understood my frustration. I'm really happy to have him. Plus, I realized I actually have a week more of vacation left so it would have been eventually fine. Just needed it out.

I've GMed Edge of the Empire, so I'm pretty savvy to the system, but never got to engage with it from the PC side. So I'm pretty psyched about that. Also my brother is joining, and thats rare, so pretty psyched about that as well.

It has been so cool to see the players I GM for and play with improve over time in terms of system mastery and getting into character. I have been a literal teacher of brand new people but it's cool to see me and my friend who GMs bounce ideas off each other and seeing what we learned get used in each others' games.

The finale was great. Long story

After the valiant and heroic death of the judge, the psyker gets red-hot mad. Mad enough to create an explosive inferno that destroys the next encounter with entrenched and hidden corrupted stormtroopers. These fellows got in perfect positions, with a heavy machinegun to suppress the acolytes and allow their buddies with grenade launchers to flank. These launchers were armed with anti-armour and EMP grenades to shut down the techpriest and get through the vet's armour. That did not happen. Well, the EMP grenade came out but I rolled its minimum value so it was useless. Eight heavily armed veterans get caught on fire instead. Then came the second punch of the encounter, Mallaithe. A man trapped in daemonically possessed armour that moves to their whims. He is finally unleashed to his most powerful form, winged and raging. He swoops down on the acolytes. He gets jobbed by the sister of battle in one hit. He has been jobbed twice the two times I introduced him in the first attack on him. I have built up this guy so much but I can't help but laugh and with the blow of the fervent sister the armour and weapon is broken and the man inside is freed. He doesn't comprehend anything.

They mop up the rest. They finally get to execute the man that tricked them three years ago out of game and led them to so much trouble.

They enter the temple. They job two characters I had made that were supposed to serve as a singular or duo pair of bosses to the university students I taught DH and GM'd for. One that was the rival to that dead arbitrator complains that he knows none of these people and that the prophet stole the kill he began months ago with the tripping of the judge into a grenade blast. Killed in one to two hits. Then come the mirror guard. The psyker is smart. She crushes and immobilizes the one she knows can teleport 50m with a half or free action. Unfortunately, his hot-headed brother beats the sister to a bloody pulp with his power fighting-gear and heads for the psyker. He launches a knee and the psyker tries to look into the future to avoid it. Unfortunately, the null rod on his back dampens her ability and she takes the equivalent blow of getting hit by a truck. Then he follows it up with a left hook and the character is down.

The player is insistent on burning his fate and getting back up at 0 wounds. I try to tell him that I actually have something planned that would help him get back up to max wounds after his fate is burned but he is very insistent. The hot-headed brother dodges eight shots from a stormbolter fired by the tech priest. He tries to approach. A force sword slices him clean in two, having not seen the psyker get back up bloodied. He falls.

Then the other brother finally is released. He immediately goes after the techpriest and strikes a mighty blow and retreats. He attempts to do the same with the psyker but he just misses. He teleports again. He tells them to excuse his poor strikes, his mother died yesterday. This allows the psyker to do two things. The sound of his voice lets her pinpoint his position and she launches a molten beam at the guy behind a stone room which bloodies him. She also tells him she knows about the death. She's the reason.

He tells her she shouldn't have told him that and goes after her. Once again, she is only saved by her divination as he retreats. Their comrade, a disguised and armoured beastman that is the servant of a radical recongregationist inquisitor, looks for the man. With his help, the psyker unleashes another inferno in the room the man is cornered in. Unfortunately, the blessings of Slaanesh allow him to move beyond the radius of the explosion. Then he slays the beastman. He laughs and calls them worthless. Then the techpriest is finally able to use his held action to Scarface the prideful prick into a pool below. He tried to dodge. He failed.

They limp into the next room. They see an overwhelming force distracted by a piece of a dead and congealed god. One sneaks around and shoots down the leader of a ritual to use the thing to cause mass chaos. The other seven psykers have a chance to keep up the ritual if all of them pass with easy tests. One fails. the ritual fails and the thing is dispersed. Two rubrics cannot take the immaterial strain and are disabled. Then the room starts heating up as this plateau that has been kept from exploding by ethereal forces finally goes off. They run. The sister has been crawling out this entire time.

They run out to find a valkyrie manned by an old remade face and to finally meet their inquisitor that has been away for five years. They have never seen him. He thanks them. They have saved the planet (again) and stopped the first domino of the bbeg's plan to drop to make their plans much easier. Now they have them on the backfoot. After settling matters on the planet (including almost having their souls eaten by the arch-villain), they move to their new quarters and blast off into the warp with their gellar field on, to the final campaign.

edit: Also, both times I have brought out the archvillain and voiced them, I have gotten really into character which also involves really excitable sentences with repeated audible short breaths in-between that I have become light-headed both times and had to take like a 10 second break to breathe and self remind to watch my breath.

Two friends want to play again and we're torn between sci-fi and fantasy, so we want to do both. We're most used to playing D&D 5e but I don't think it'll handle the transition as well. If we did 5e I'd probably split the genres and say their fantasy characters are for a galactic MMO simulator, but their real characters are the sci-fi versions. In that vein, I have the Dark Matter 5e stuff in development, or the Star Wars 5e PDFs.

I think SWN and ICRPG would be the easiest transition because they're still d20, but ICRPG in the long term doesn't always have the same staying power as other games when you're used to a certain kind of progress.

Uncharted Worlds would be easy to run as well, because I've done it before, and because I want them to have a lot of narrative say in the world and its events. This and ICRPG would have the easiest space combat.

Fragged Empire and O.L.D./N.E.W. use dice pools and are made to go between the genres pretty easily, so that's neat.

Genesys uses its dice system that I'm unfamiliar with, but is also fairly universal, right?

And because I need to leave a little, here's me talking about playing Zombie World for the first time yesterday.

Okay, so Zombie World is a neat card-based PbtA game that I got to enjoy due to having a story gaming group that meets at my favorite local nerd store. I missed out on the Kickstarter because it wasn't even on my radar, but we played about a three to four hour one-shot that was lovely. You have a secret Past and Trauma that you can reveal to do things in the game or shift the narrative, and you also have a Present that describes who you are to your survivor group. I was a Follower (Present) that was a Drug Dealer and is Predatory. We started in a New Mexico farm just a month after the zombies started up. The other characters ranged from an amoral cook that knew I disposed of a drug addict friend to get to safety, an athletic coach that helped me cover that up and blame the cook, a diplomatic guy that turned out to be reckless once you gave him a high-powered rifle, and a visionary that wanted to lead the group.

We were all pretty friendly outwardly in the beginning. Together we improved our irrigation system despite a rattlesnake in the fields, we murdered a survivor's chihuahua that only barked at night and was a liability, and, after some of the group got sick, successfully got medical supplies from an old general store "in town". Unfortunately, we also met with a few swarms there and they followed us back to the farm. That's where everything went to shit.

The visionary and the coach fought over the defense plans while the rest of us actively defended the fence, which led to the coach roundhouse kicking the visionary into serious harm. Then the visionary's henchman, the diplomat, shot her while she was pinned down but holding her own against two zombies since she attacked the visionary. She was dying so my character went to snuff her out, but was stopped by a baseball bat to the back of the head by the coach's NPC friend. Long story short the coach wound up dead after further conflict in the party. The NPC friend became the new player character that went after the murderers and was killed, and the third player character was a hunter that had been an NPC in the party since the beginning. It also turned out that she was a prophet, and had a cult among the NPCs this whole time. Then the tone changed.

We had plenty of reservations about there being a cult in the group until some Mad Max marauders drove up in their well-equipped convoy and demanded our crops. Between the prophet player and my reverend NPC we peacefully welcomed the leadership into our house while the other groups began loading supplies from the rest of the property in a polite raid. We fed them drugged (from my stache) soup and slit their throats after they had passed out, and the hunters took out the field raiders with bows. After that, we took the bodies to the nearby forest for an apparent cult ceremony to put them at rest. Unfortunately with so many bodies, half of the corpses began turning before we could get to them and took a bite out of the visionary's arm before we could escape back to the farm. He confided in the prophet and looked for salvation, but only found Drug Soup. After that, we took our supplies and loot and became the missionaries we were always meant to be by taking our prophet's word on the road. Blood for the Blood God(dess).

Overall I really enjoyed the game and see it as a good way to make PbtA RPGs even more accessible to people outside of gaming. The different enclaves/settings include prison, a farm, a hospital, or the mall. Very cool.

Would there be interest in a PBP game on the board of a pregens scenario for the new Alien RPG? High lethality space horror using d6 pools similar to the companies Corliolis and Tales From the Loop. You wouldn't need access to the rules since the game isn't out yet and you'll be using pregens characters, but it is basically roll skill + stat + equipment + stress in d6 and 6s are successes, 1s on stress dice lead to bad things happening.
And to be clear, there would be a very good chance that everyone would die. If you die early though you can take over an NPC. Also the possibility of some pvp since your character may or may not have a secret mission that puts everyone's life at risk like Burke or Ash.

I'll just point out that all this talk of heresy earlier in this thread has been surely noticed by the Imperium and that over on Humble Bundle they happen to be offering what appears to be all of the Dark Heresy line in a Inquisition-approved bundle for about the next two weeks or so.

Doctors Without Borders benefits from it, which surely grants grace in Emperor's eternal eyes and perhaps a reprieve from your inevitable purging by sacred bolter and ruinous flame.

What I'm saying is:

MrVyngaard on August 15

"now I've got this mental image of caucuses as cafeteria tables in prison, and new congressmen having to beat someone up on inauguration day." - Raiden333

It's fun to have a player with a character you both agreed became too strong for the current adventure so that character takes an in-game break and they get up another character.

That allows you to treat the character like Goku/Jotaro/Etc. and bring them out when shit is for real but that character is there so everything feels like it's gotten a lot more even.

I feel kind of bad I keep making scenarios for the acolytes in DH where they are given a brand new toy or assets or an army and then I make an adventure where they cannot use those things practically. They never really question it or ever express that they feel it's unfair and the bad feeling is more out of me wanting them to be able to use those resources because I want them to feel cool. Early vindictive GM me would say the reason they become impractical it was because these guys are too strong and I have to limit them. Now it's usually just a coincidence born out of the narrative. They gotta be subtle, it really is just impractical, the locales and terrain don't allow for it, etc.

One thing that's nice about the God Dust Crusaders campaign I'm making is that the multiple planet-trekking core of the campaign is that I can just take my pick of splat book's NPC profiles along with brewing up my own villains and NPCs as I did before. The next place they're going is a planet full of canyons and fertile valleys that criss-cross that has like janissaries, exotic hunters, and a kind of mix of Ottoman Empire and middle-eastern influences in feudal tech level and society so like muskets, arquebuses, and crossbows along with big curved blades. I have been wanting to do a feudal world adventure for a while and I have another planned on another world from the splats which are a more classically European medieval society but on a very cold world broken up by big feudal fortresses (where my not-Punisher got the idea for his symbol and armour from) where they fight mythological-like salamanders. I'm excited about that world - I'm excited about all of them because of the variety - because the adventure going to be the equivalent of a slower breather episode where they're just docked above this world waiting for fuel and can wander around. They're essentially going to meet the last true dragon of that world that was left behind by Eldar that has limited psychic abilities where they are not fully sapient but can empath emotions. Or it's just a winged lizard and a harlequin is fucking with them. A little Neverending Story for a 40k RPG but they might be able to get it as a mount. Their inquisitor is kind of between radical and puritan so it's eh by him. Wyverns are a guardsman roughrider mount already. Also, I promised one of them they can get a six-legged bear mount and then they never followed up on getting it so it would be a neat replacement they can use for the second half of the campaign.

Along with the dragon, they're going to go over a piece of the not-Punisher's past, just like hang out in this cold place, and there will be the return of the prophet of Khorne along with a rival Khornate champion that has a rival patron to that prophet's greater daemon so that will be fun to face with everyone leveled up to be more on par with him when he could have 1vParty'd them before. That rival, similar to her son they hurt, has a big Joisey accent and is as hot-headed if not more so that will be really fun to voice and play.

2E is better as a system. There are key changes even if the core is very similar. If you want like neat things to read 1E has piles of books so if there's a tier for all of those splats then you'd probably be more interested in that.

How easy is it to adapt 1e stuff to 2e? Would it be possible to reuse bad guys, items etc., or would there be some adjustment to numbers required?

Pretty easy. I use stuff from across the lines in 2E all the time. I will say that 1E does have kind of marginally lower power level start essentially even if both settings are pretty lethal. If you’re moving stuff to 2E and you’re not comfortable or feel like you have a grasp of what stats they should have, then just like add +5 or +10 to NPC profiles’ characteristics and you’re good.

Also if you can’t wrap your head around the influence system (which took me like four years to really appreciate) I have made a more conventional wages system that is tied to influence in my Malice Overhaul on the blog. The difficulty with using that wage system is that, while I do have prices for some classes of things, you will have to go back and look up its price in DH1E unless the GM wants to arbitrarily set the price.

I guess striking while the iron’s hot, would any of you that are now new owners of the DH2E handbook be interested me GMing a low Rorschach level street vigilante adventure set in 40k? I’ve had the idea for a while and I’ve been more interested ever since learning the super hero mmos out there don’t really have RP servers.

That would entail starting as Imperial schmucks where the highest supply you’re likely to see is if you’re in the PDF or disinherited bottom of the strata nobility on either a Civilized World or a Hive World using your fists and whatever weapons you can find against criminals, cultists, and possibly worse.

Pretty much all the systems would be the same except influence would be scaled down tremendously and we’d be using my homebrew wage system and unarmed system that changes how effective unarmed is and how folks receive fatigue.

Character wise it’d be pretty open. Maybe you’re opportunists, maybe you’re pious, maybe you’re bloodthirsty, maybe you’re vengeful, maybe you just give a fuck, or a mix. I’d essentially provide pared down versions of what’s in the books and my homebrew for character creation.

I like gritty street noire, vigilante comics, crime movies, detective stories, neon cyberpunk stuff, and the like so you know what you’d be getting into. Also awful New England accents, regular English accents, and whatever mix I feel as 40k is pretty open with that stuff.

In terms of timing I can do early afternoon and late Saturday most definitely, possibly sundays depending on my friend’s Only War/Dark Heresy switch game although I think he prefers Fridays. I also live in Central Time if that helps.

I gathered friends to do the vigilante campaign. One might be playing a masked felinid called the Cat Burglar. He has been warned he will hear the word “twist” a lot.

So, I decided I wanted to return a character for this setting in a homebrew city in a homebrew world in a homebrew sector. The Rook’s coming back. However, as this is a hundred years in the future from the Malice campaigns (closer to Imperium Nihilus but set in Segmentum Ultima) this guy heard about that guy and like the Hobgoblin stole his look. Now, the Malice version is pretty much the Garth Ennis version of Frank Castle set in 40k with key changes to differentiate him.

The Vigilante version is like what if Mark Millar wrote the Punisher. A gigantic opportunistic heavily armed scumbag. Rather than being on a personal grief-fueled crusade, the dude calling himself Black Rook goes around blasting gangers and stealing blood money because he can and it’s fun. He stole the original trenchcoat draped plague doctor look and added gaudy “improvements”.

It will be very clear the players might have to put him down at some point.

He’s going to be the (already done but still) twist of the helper NPC that guides new players through their first mission and then dies to set the stakes.

I hope one of the players steal his look, makes a chess pun, and creates the White Rook as his identity.

Just realized that while the influence system will be greatly downplayed and the game might resemble fresh acolyte gameplay, the character creation system has to be altered a good amount to make sense without just making everyone take Civilized World, Adeptus Administratum. That would be really boring.

So I need to make pared down and shit versions of the character creation options across the core rulebook, splats, and my homebrew. I'm making this a full ruleset.

First vigilante game went off pretty great. Gigantic asshole not-punisher worked out pretty well alongside the moment of establishing that they either band together and cause big trouble and distractions or be hunted down by great forces behind the scenes of the planet they're on who now know all of their faces. New players got a taste of combat and social stuff. I'm really happy with it.

Also, we finally finished the regiment and playstyle we're doing in Only War. We are a condemned Beastman Auxilia/Penal Legion that performs guerilla warfare so that we are well away from the line infantry that want to murder us on sight. I play a hyena person (again) and my friend is playing a medic komodo dragon man. The GM actually gave us individual homeworld stats based on what animal we are like I got Dark-Sight, bonuses to fellowship and strength, and enhanced hearing and smell but also weaknesses to hearing and smell based weapons like concussive grenades. The komodo dragon got bonuses to toughness and a bite attack with toxic alongside more wounds. He also has a goof-ass avatar of a DnD lizardman with a dumb smile on his face so that will be fun.

I thought it was a really interesting and well-written piece. It's not news that the narrative that has emerged over the decades about D&D's origins has downplayed Arneson's contributions (some of that downplaying coming from Gygax himself, unfortunately), but there are a bunch of details in here that I'd never heard before; I didn't know just how important Arneson was to the spirit of roleplaying games, which - as the article points out - has remained constant through the decades, while Gygax's contribution of specific rules and mechanics has been replaced in parts as new editions tweak the rules. I also didn't realize the extent to which Gygax was dismissive towards Arneson (and, like, harmful to his career and salary).

It also made me think about how complicated the actual history of this or any other sequence of events is. Looking at it now, with this information, it sure looks like Gygax was a jealous hack who appropriated a beautiful dreamer's genuine breakthrough and got most of the credit and cultural mindshare by getting it to print. The reality, though, is that it's impossible to know all the factors. I can easily believe that Gygax being jealous and wanting to assert himself was a factor - but I don't know what else was going on in his life. The article mentions that he had five kids and was unemployed; that kinda thing can make even a good person desperate. People can have bad days, or they might do something out of very justifiable motivations that gets misinterpreted by the other party (or goes unintentionally wrong some other way). Maybe Gygax felt that he'd done the actual hard work, which was creating a concrete and coherent set of rules that could let other people experience something similar to what it's like to play with Arneson without actually having to secure an appointment with Arneson - and I don't think that would be entirely wrong, either.

I'm not really trying to defend Gygagx, or doubt the "Arneson got mistreated" side of the story, just kinda ruminating on how a complicated and hairy web of events and actions - which may not even be related, or seem like big deals at the time, or be seen and interpreted in very different ways by all involved - over time and by being passed from person to person becomes squeezed and shaped and smoothed into a neat and coherent narrative that Tells A Story and Make Sense, even if it's wrong or incomplete. Like a stone being ground smooth by water.

Anyway, I thought it was an interesting read that expanded my understanding of what may have gone on in the 70s and 80s, and filled out some cool pre-Chainmail history that I didn't know about.

Yeah, that was my first thought too (and is kind of the natural comparison point for someone familiar with the history of geek culture). I don't know how accurate the comparison is; I feel like the Lee/Kirby relationship has been documented more thoroughly and openly than the Gygax/Arneson one (which is why I appreciate this article filling in a few more gaps). Right now my impression is that Stan Lee has been more self-serving than Gary Gygax has been, but maybe that's just because I don't have enough details.

It seems pretty obvious that Arneson got fucked (and that Gygax was an asshole) but I'm also real hesitant to discount the work that Gygax did to make D&D. The difference between an RPG that only the designer(s) can run, and one that can be published and played by anyone is massive -- even today when people know what an RPG is. Say what you will about early D&D, but taking that concept and boiling it down into a relatively small manual is an feat.

The article is a decent roundup of a lot of the discussions that have been going on in the community recently. Arneson ended up like a lot of artists without cutthroat business sense. It's nice to see more people are being made aware of his contribution to our modern role-playing games, but I think the modern games owe much larger debts to other writers now. What was a tabletop RPG in 1983 would be pretty unrecognizable to most people playing today.

Rob Heinsoo, Richard Baker, Jonathan Tweet, Bill Slavicsek, Vincent Baker, etc. all arguably have had a larger impact on the games we play today than Arneson or Gygax, although without that half-step from wargaming to fantasy role-playing we'd probably be much less far along in the development of tabletop RPGs.